COLUMBUS, Ohio -- With a sunny day and temperatures in the 70s expected, Urban Meyer wants a packed house at Ohio Stadium for Saturday's spring football game. Chasing that, Ohio State admitted, and attempted to correct, a pricing mistake on Friday, dropping the price of tickets from $20 to $5.

"We overpriced it," athletic director Gene Smith told cleveland.com at a football coaches clinic at Ohio State on Friday morning that included speeches from Meyer and Browns coach Mike Pettine. "We deserve to have a huge crowd, so we said, 'Let's change it.'"

Meyer said he'd like to shoot for a crowd of 90,000 or 100,000 at the game. Asked if he was involved in dropping the ticket price, Meyer raised his eyebrows and grinned. He said he's totally focused on recruiting, and the best thing for recruiting is a big crowd and great atmosphere.

High ticket prices may have been standing in the way of that. Meyer said the price was first brought to his attention by his wife, Shelley.

"I'm really excited about it," Meyer said of the change. "I just think it's great. I think it's great for Ohio State to do that."

Last year, with Ohio Stadium undergoing renovations, the game was held at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, and it drew just over 37,000 fans. Prices were $12 for general admission and $18 for box seats.

In Meyer's first spring at Ohio State in 2012, the Buckeyes drew 81,112 at Ohio Stadium, the best in the nation for a spring game that year. Prices were $7 in advance and $15 the day of the game.

Ohio State set what was the national record for a spring game on a beautiful day in 2009 with more than 95,000 fans. Tickets that year were $5 in advance and on the day of the game.

That is what Smith said the Buckeyes realize they need to encourage. Lesson learned, Smith mentioned that game and said "we've got to get back to that."

So instead of $20 the day of the game, and $12 in advance, tickets for this game are now back to $5. Fans who purchased tickets for $12 in advance may return to the place where they purchased those tickets to have the difference refunded.

Ticket sales benefit the LiFE Sports program and the Boys and Girls Club, and Ohio State said fans who purchased advance tickets may also see the difference donated to those programs.

Smith said funding LiFE Sports, which benefits 700 children in the Columbus area, is why the tickets were priced so high at the start.

“That’s our largest outreach, so I’ve got to balance that,” Smith said. “We do have huge (gameday) expenditures, so we’ve got to pay for our stadium operations. But we’ll probably stay at this (reduced) level in the future as long as we can handle that.”

Ohio State said about 36,000 tickets were sold before the decision to reduce prices. Smith said on a day with good weather, the Buckeyes had about 18,000 walkup tickets in the past. A similar number wouldn't get Ohio State to the 90,000 number that Meyer is hoping for and that they have reached in the past.

Meyer said he would like to have an autograph signing and more of a fan interaction as part of the game. The Buckeyes are having players race students during halftime as an attempt by Meyer to encourage that kind of relationship with OSU students and fans. The Buckeyes did have an autograph signing in the past, but the event became too large to handle, and the university has become more aware of autograph seekers out to turn a profit off player signatures.

Meyer said he asked about doing an autograph signing around the spring game when he was hired, and he was told of those issues, which he also encountered at Florida. He still sounded interested Friday in trying to do more in the future.

But first, the Buckeyes had to get the ticket price right. At $20, it wasn't. At $5, as the past has shown, it should be. That's if the change didn't come too late for the crowd Saturday.

"I remember in that stadium one year it was ridiculous," Meyer said, recalling his two years as a grad assistant in the '80s. "I'd love to have 100,000 people, 90,000 people. It might be asking a lot. But we're going to give them an entertaining game and show appreciation for coming like we always do. It's been a cold winter now. Go hang out in the Horseshoe."

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